Approaching its centennial season in 2020-21, the Virginia Symphony Orchestra (VSO) is expanding into exciting new areas of opportunity – and challenging expectations of what a 21
century orchestra can be.At the same time, the VSO is undertaking a search for a new artistic leader to follow JoAnn Falletta, who will be stepping down after 29 successful years as the VSO’s Music Director.

Ideally, the VSO’s new artistic leader will bring not only a solid commitment to expanding the horizons of the orchestra as an ensemble but also a passion for identifying and supporting the individual creative development of our VSO musicians. Our next Music Director will demonstrate innovation in concert programming across the spectrum of our offerings. We are looking for a transformative, charismatic communicator who will speak to a variety of audiences and bring new creativity to educational, artistic, and community service partnerships in which the VSO will continue to be a driving force.

Open Auditions

Administrative Opportunities

Manager of Patron Services and Sales

The Virginia Symphony Orchestra is searching for the ideal candidate to manage patron services and sales efforts. The model candidate is a highly motivated team player, must be committed to maintaining a superior level of customer service at all times and must be detail-oriented, customer-focused and results-driven. Candidate will work to identify and maximize patron sales and group ticket sales opportunities.

Join the creative team at the Virginia Symphony Orchestra as
Executive Assistant to the CEO and Music Director
. Learn how a performing arts organization works from the inside. We are looking for a smart, energetic multi-tasker with excellent writing skills, superb attention to detail and a commitment to excellence– just like the musicians of the VSO! Great opportunity for an ambitious and talented candidate to propel the VSO forward toward our 100
th
anniversary in 2020.

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A warm welcome back to six of EMI's earliest complete Viennese operettas, recorded in London between 1953 and 1955 under the supervision of Waiter Legge. These classic albums were hailed on their original release and have reached legendary status — possibly because they were unavailable for so long, but more likely because all six starred Elisabeth Schwarzkopf (Mrs. Legge) and Nicolai Gedda. In a broad sense, they document the half‐century history of the Viennese operetta from the first great golden‐era hit “Die Fledermaus.” to one of the last of the silver age, “The Land of Smiles.”

Before the LP era, operetta enthusiasts had to content themselves with potpourris, vocal gems, band arrangements and various excerpts. Some were quite historic: In 1906, the company that was to become EMI recorded the original Viennese “Merry Widow” stars, Mizzi Günther and Louis Treumann, in a few excerpts. In 1928, Richard Tauber and Vera Schwarz led a fine Berlin cast in excerpts from “Die Fledermaus” — these were presumably the disks that inspired Noel Coward to write “Bitter Sweet.” And while Tauber, Schmidt, Wittrisch and dozens of other European and American stars memorably recorded the big Viennese operetta hits, complete versions, like, the Gilbert and Sullivan albums Savoyards could buy from 1918, were virtually non‐existent.

So, in 1953, one could finally hear a complete “Merry Widow” with a firstrate cast. Ernest Newman pointed out in the original album notes the advantage of having the music sung by “artists who have spent the greater part of their artistic life in the company of Wagner, Wolf, Brahris. Strauss, Verdi, and other masters of the grander style.” band.

‘EMI's classic recordings of the 1950's, starring Schwarzkopf and Gedda, document a half century of Viennese operetta.’

Neither Mss Schwarzkopf nor Mr. Gedda was known for her or his oper etta prowesi, After creating a sensation in 1952 at the Stockholm Royal Opera Adam's “Le Postillon de Longjumeau,” Nicolai Gedda was auditioned for EMI. Following a Dimitri in their “Boris Godunov,” he began recording the Legge operetta series: at the age of 28. his young, warm, fresh voice was already being likened to Schipa and Tauber. Miss Schwarzkopf had sung the Marschallin for the first time at La Scala in 1952; the following year, the same year the operetta recordings began, she made her New York recital debut at Town Hall. Her voice was in its prime, whether singing lieder, opera or operetta. Except for the Karajan “Fledermaus,” the conductor for the series was Otto Ackermann, Bucharest‐born, who had been musical director of the Vienna Volksuper after the War. Ackermann saw to it that
echt‐Wienerisch
artists like Erich Kunz were given parts to ensure a Viennese ambience.

One reason for these discrepancies was failure to distinguish between the quality of the evidence and the magnitude of net benefit. For example, an SR and meta-analysis might highlight a dramatic effect size regardless of the risk of bias in the body of evidence. Conversely, use of a rigid hierarchy gave the impression that any effect based on randomized trial evidence was clinically important, regardless of the size of the effect. In 2001, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force broke new ground when it updated its review methods, separating its assessment of the quality of evidence from its assessment of the magnitude of effect (Harris et al., 2001).

What Are the Characteristics of Quality
for a Body of Evidence?

Experts in SR methodology agree on the conceptual underpinnings for the systematic assessment of a body of evidence. The committee identified eight basic characteristics of quality, described below, that are integral to assessing and characterizing the quality of a body of evidence. These characteristics—risk of bias, consistency, precision, directness, and reporting bias, and for observational studies, dose–response association, plausible confounding that would change an observed effect, and strength of association—are used by GRADE; the Cochrane Collaboration, which has adopted the GRADE approach; and the AHRQ Effective Health Care Program, which adopted a modified version of the GRADE approach (Owens et al., 2010; Balshem et al., 2011; Falck-Ytter et al., 2010; Schünemann et al., 2008). Although their terminology varies somewhat, Falck-Ytter and his GRADE colleagues describe any differences between the GRADE and AHRQ quality characteristics as essentially semantic (Falck-Ytter et al., 2010). Owens and his AHRQ colleagues appear

to agree (Owens et al., 2010). As Boxes and indicate, the two approaches are quite similar.

In the context of a body of evidence, risk of bias refers to the extent to which flaws in the design and execution of a collection of studies could bias the estimate of effect for each outcome under study.

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describes the factors related to the design and conduct of randomized trials and observational studies that may influence the magnitude and direction of bias for a particular outcome (e.g., sequence generation, allocation concealment, blinding, incomplete data, selective reporting of outcomes, confounding, etc.), as well as

available tools for assessing risk of bias in individual studies. Assessing risk of bias for a body of evidence requires a cumulative assessment of the risk of bias across all individual studies for each specific outcome of interest. Study biases are outcome dependent in that potential sources of bias impact different outcomes in different ways; for example, blinding of outcome assessment to a treatment group might be less important for a study of the effect of an intervention on mortality than for a study measuring pain relief. The degree of confidence in the summary estimate of effect will depend on the extent to which specific biases in the included studies affect a specific outcome.